Workshop – The Architectural Model: Across Histories and Disciplines

Zaha Hadid Architects, Museum of Islamic Art, Model and painting, Doha, Qatar, 1997 © Zaha Hadid Foundation

Zaha Hadid Architects, Vitra Fire Station, Presentation box, Weil am Rhein, Germany, 1991-1993, Acrylic and aluminium © Zaha Hadid Foundation

Zaha Hadid Architects, Zaha Hadid Architects, Center for Contemporary Art, Jelly bean volumetric study, Cincinnati, USA, 2001, Resin, steel, wire and perspex © Zaha Hadid Foundation

The exhibition Zaha Hadid: Paper Museums focuses on paper relief models as important design and presentation tools, and a unique materiality within the Zaha Hadid Foundation’s collection. Made when Zaha Hadid Architects used both analogue and digital creative methods during the late 1990s and early 2000s, the prevalence of reliefs and paper models at this time seems particularly significant, anticipating new technological possibilities for modelling complex volumes and curves. The physical techniques of cutting, folding and layering are also in keeping with the practice’s aim to create a seamless flow between the city and museum space, integrating their design within its urban context.  

Equally, the reliefs show an underexplored aspect of Hadid’s interdisciplinarity, and an expansion of her interest in twentieth-century modernism across art, design and architecture. Nodding to the influence of suprematism and constructivism in particular, which Hadid first explored in paintings for her unbuilt projects in the late 1970s through into the 1980s, they continue her use of abstraction to represent architectural concepts and designs that became finally realised in landmark museum buildings. 

With all of this in mind, this workshop on 18 October 2024 from 14:00-17:00 seeks to address the significance of models within architecture from the twentieth century to contemporary practice. Topics of discussion may include the importance of physical concept, design and presentation models in the digital age; the use of abstraction, fine art or craft techniques in architectural model making; the boundaries between reliefs, sculpture and models; the importance of paper and card for model making, along with the exhibition and display of models, and their history and future within archives and collections, including museums and architectural practices. 

Speakers include: 

Ellie Sampson, model maker and paper cut artist 

Matthew Wells, Manchester School of Architecture, University of Manchester 

SimpsonHaugh Architects 

Mark Garcia, The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL 

Olivia Horsfall-Turner, RIBA 

Speakers will present on their work individually, followed by a roundtable discussion at the end.